Founded in 1993 by brothers Tom and David Gardner, The Motley Fool helps millions of people attain financial freedom through our website, podcasts, books, newspaper column, radio show, and premium investing services.

CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton Comments on the Silver Investigation

Connecting the four-year silver investigation to a broader pattern of manipulation.

Over the weekend, London's Financial Times dispatched some stunning news to silver investors awaiting the conclusion of a four-year investigation into allegations of silver price manipulation.

The article, entitled "Four-Year Silver Probe Set to be Dropped," reported that the investigation "looks increasingly likely to be dropped after US regulators failed to find enough evidence to support a legal case." If the report were to prove correct, this would represent a crushing blow to commodity investors like myself that have become quite convinced after a thorough review of the facts that the markets for silver and gold have been subjected to highly effective campaigns of deliberate price manipulation.

On Monday morning, I reached out to Commissioner Bart Chilton of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission for comment. Addressing the report that his agency will likely drop the investigation with no charges filed, Chilton countered: "The Financial Times report related to silver is not only premature, but inaccurate in several respects."

Chilton continued: "Whenever the CFTC does take an action or actions related to our silver investigation, I am hopeful that we will do so in a fulsome and transparent manner. That will certainly be my quest in anything we do."

Indeed, one could say that Commissioner Chilton has been on something of a quest to champion the public interest on this issue, and in so doing he has openly broadcast his own conclusion that "there have been fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control" the price of silver. Incredibly, nearly two full years have passed since Chilton shared that conclusion and pressured his agency to bring the investigation to a timely conclusion by stating: "I think the public deserves some answers in the very near future." Whatever the official outcome of the investigation, I think the public already has some important answers to the questions regarding precious-metal price manipulation as corroborated by Commissioner Chilton's remarks.

CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton

In his remarks to me on Monday morning, Chilton took the fascinating step of broadening the scope of his remarks to include gold this time around, and he also seemed to connect the more recent episodes of highly questionable market dynamics -- which market observers like the Gold Antitrust Action Committee and myself have publicly decried -- to the specific events considered within the four-year silver investigation: "I continue to believe, consistent with my previous statements and information from the public, that there have been devious efforts related to moving the price of silver. There have also been silver and gold market anomalies outside of the silver investigation window that have raised, and continue to raise, market concerns."

With those powerful remarks, Chilton suggests that he believes the particular events upon which the silver investigation has focused form part of a broader pattern concerning "market anomalies" that continue right through to the present day. Ultimately, I think the investing public will discover the hand of the Federal Reserve in these ongoing efforts to manipulate gold and silver prices as a form of damage control to mitigate the consequences of sustained easy monetary policy. I am certainly not alone in that assessment, as none other than Paul Craig Roberts -- former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan -- recently had this to say on the matter: "I suspect that the Federal Reserve is manipulating the gold and silver markets in order to prevent its low interest rate policy from undermining the value of the US dollar. It is easy to offset rising prices of bullion due to physical demand by selling shorts in the paper market."

Whether or not the CFTC files charges of price manipulation (or "attempted" manipulation) against one or more of the identified targets of the inquiry -- most notably the very same JPMorgan Chase(NYSE: JPM) that is also implicated in the LIBOR rigging scandal -- I believe that a determination has already been reached within the court of public opinion. With strong corroboration by noted economists like Paul Craig Roberts, financial journalists like The Telegraph's Thomas Pascoe, respected fund managers like First Eagle Funds' Jean-Marie Eveillard, and now even a sitting commissioner at the relevant commodity futures regulatory agency; the issue of gold and silver price manipulation has surged out of obscurity and straight into the world's public spotlight. Revelations from the still-breaking LIBOR scandal -- and not to mention the formerly explicit gold manipulation of the London Gold Pool -- provide a compelling set of precedents.

I have already stated that I expect gold will reach $2,250 per ounce solely on the basis of mining industry fundamentals that are setting the stage for a shortfall in physical supply. In my view, that would correspond to a silver price north of $50 per ounce. In the event that real transparency is ever cast upon this shadowy corner of the financial universe, frankly, gold and silver stand to record breathtaking gains as the actual physical supply of both metals gains predominance over leveraged paper contracts as the final determinant of price. In the event that an ongoing campaign to manipulate those prices is exposed, my preferred gold miners, Primero Mining(NYSE: PPP) and Eldorado Gold(NYSE: EGO), stand to gain handsomely. Because the physical supply may be even more constrained in silver, I expect great things over the long haul from proven operatorsEndeavour Silver(NYSE: EXK) and First Majestic Silver(NYSE: AG). To track my ongoing coverage of the manipulation issue as well as my analysis of promising mining stocks, please bookmark my article list or follow me on Twitter.